Aviation: The 6,900-Mile Skyjack

With all the casual calm of a Grand
Canyon-on-your-left announcement, Pilot Donald Cook's voice came over
the public-address system: "There's a man here who wants to go
somewhere, and he's just chartered himself an airplane." The 39
passengers on TWA Flight 85, over Fresno and bound for San Francisco,
suddenly realized that they had joined the growing ranks of the
skyjacked. It was not simply the 55th case of skyjacking in 1969; it
turned out to be the longest and oddest pirated flight in aviation
history.

One man, armed with a folding-stock M-l carbine, changed Flight 85 from
a routine...